Robbie Birkner’s Blog

Archive for October, 2010

After reading up on the Libyan government shutting down the popular URL link shortening service called VB.ly. NIC.ly I thought the article “Does Size Matter?” would be interesting for my readers. In addition many registrars advertise ccTLD for URL-Shorteners and I believe this is not the right way of advertising a ccTLD. This article is definitely an eye-opener and worth reading. I hope you enjoy it.

Earlier this month, many of our readers heard about the Libyan government shutting down the popular URL link shortening service called VB.ly. NIC.ly, the official registry operator for the .ly domain space, the official country-code top level domain of Libya, is now scrutinizing anyone using all .ly shortening services. In fact, NIC.ly has gone as far as restricting four character or less .ly registrations to only Libyian nationals. This decision is already having implications for companies that utilize .ly (bit.ly and ow.ly come to mind) in their URL shortening services.

What is a URL Shortener?

URL shorteners are not new. In fact, URL shortening services have been around since 2002, transforming long URLs into short manageable links. Among the most popular url shortening services are Bit.ly and Tinyurl. Twitter and its 140 character message limit has been driving force behind these services in recent years.

Long URLs are cumbersome. With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short-form publishing (micro-blogging), a shortened URL enables users to communicate rather than waste valuable space. Social media and the mobile Internet have made character limits front and center for millions of users.

2. Comprehensive Tracking (aka Click Analytics)

A number of URL shortening services now provide comprehensive tracking features. For example, Google’s URL shortener goo.gl includes a dashboard that shows statistics. These statistics include clicks over time, top traffic referrers, top countries users are visiting from, and even the type of browsers used or the user’s operating system.

3. Potential SEO Benefits

SEO via URL shortening is debatable. However, according to SearchEngineWatch.com , “Goo.gl could work into Google’s ranking algorithm and become a factor in real-time search results, and possibly even regular search results if the shortener proves popular. With all this data on what links are being shared and clicked, Google can see what’s trending, and likely use this as a ranking factor.”

What are Some of the Disadvantages of Using a URL Shortener?

1. Potential Domain Hijacking Threats

There is a possibility that someone could hijack the domain and forward all of the active shortened URLs to a malware.

2. Gone with the Wind?

As seen with the registry operator of .LY, a ccTLD registry can easily change their registration policies or many even go out of business. Additionally, small ccTLD registries many also have under-provisioned DNS systems increasing the likelyhood of DNS look-up failure.

3. Middleman and Reliability

According to Joshua Schachter, founder of the popular bookmarking site Delicious.com, “The extra layer of indirection slows down browsing with additional DNS lookups and server hits. A new and potentially unreliable middleman now sits between the link and its destination. And the long-term archivability of the hyperlink now depends on the health of a third party …”

Innovation Moving Forward…

1. In the future, perhaps registries or registrars will include URL shortening capabilities with every domain. This could be a very powerful tool for branding.

2. ICANN is going to open up the domain name space with the introduction of new gTLDs (estimated 2012). We may see corporations brand thier own TLDs for URL shorteners?

I thought I would post the Blogpost of Tony Kim and his feedback on DNCruise, as this is the first time, that such an event had taken place and it was the first time, that we HEXONET had sponsored in North America.

HEXONET is a proud sponsor of Chef Patrick’s DNCruise. Over the next four days, I will touch upon what I saw and did at DNCruise. Today is about the fantastic networking at the event.

DNCruise – Bon Voyage

For four days, from October 11 – 15, the inaugural sailing of DNCruise, the first ever domain event held on a cruise-liner, took place on the beautiful high seas of the Caribbean. Some attendees of DNCruise came for the networking. Other attendees came for the training. Unexpectedly for everyone though, we walked away having a great deal of fun as well as making resonating friendships.

Networking Over Flip-flops and Long Islands

Going to many different types of technical trade-shows and events for countless number of years, I really found the networking on the DNCruise refreshing and more satisfying. Meeting new people in one’s shorts and a T-shirt forces you to drop your guard. And as a result, introductions were more genuine and friendly. Though we all still carried our titles, a new and more important title for the cruise was emerging – DNCruiser!

As a DNCruiser, networking went beyond just asking someone what they did for a living. The same ritualistic question-and-answer dance that I was accustomed to at trade-shows had to be thrown out the window. One couldn’t simply ask a few questions and then just walk away. Knowing that you will see these individuals many more times over the course of four days, it became appropriate to ask and be prepared to answer deeper questions. In the end, every DNCruiser said DNCruise was by far the best networking event they had ever experienced.

Domain Training and Learning on the High Seas

Tomorrow’s post will be on what I learned at DNCruise and why some of my shipmates say DNCruise was one of the best training events they have ever been to.

To read the entire series of Tony Kim’s updates on DNCruise, please visit blog.hexonet.net.

India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In our last blog posting, we briefly mentioned the explosive adoption and usage of the Internet in India. Let’s dig a little deeper and discover what are some of the key trends in the Internet in India and what significance this may have for the domain industry in India as well as the future growth potential of the .IN ccTLD (country-code Top-Level-Domain).

2015 Internet Penetration: According to consulting firm McKinsey, this is expected to increased almost fivefold, to more than 350 million users. It is also predicted that almost half of these users will be accessing the web via mobile phones, skipping PCs altogether.

.COM/.NET: According to Verisign, India now has over 1.037 million registered web sites using the suffixes .com or .net. .Com is the most preferred with 965,000 compared with about 72,000 for .net

.IN domains: approximately 700,000 registered

The .IN ccTLD is managed by NIXI, the National Internet Exchange of India. The majority of domain registrations in India are made by medium and large enterprises. There is extremely low penetration of domain names among individuals. This is still very much an emerging market when it comes to domain names. There is a general lack of awareness among small businesses and individuals regarding the value of owning a domain name. However, with a population close to 1.2 billion people and an increasing demand for Internet services, is now a good time to embrace the .IN x?

This week we were very fortunate to receive some valuable insight into the Indian domain market from Mr. Jeffrey Behrendt, a Canadian who operates a popular forum dedicated to the Indian domain market called INForum.in. Mr. Behrendt is an active Indian domain investor himself and was kind of enough to answer some questions we posed to him about the Indian domain market.